My name is Frank Costa, from Providence, Rhode Island.

I eat wherever I find food. If I feel I need a hot meal, I've got a few places I know I can go to find one. I mean, if I just want something to munch on, I can go to Big Daddy's, go through the trash. I can get a chicken bone, a biscuit, or a piece of pizza and chew the bread. A lot of times, that's all I need — a little bit of bread to walk around with, like a piece of gum.

If I need a good hot meal, there's the food court right over here. You can go in there and pick out just about any dish that somebody threw away. I figure, if somebody goes through the trouble at a restaurant to say, "I want to package this, I want to take this home," that's what they wanted to do with it. They didn't want someone else to come out and say, "Can I have that?" They'd give it up gladly.

But to me, I always say, why ask them for theirs when you notice a whole bunch of peoples who didn't want to take it home? It's right there in that barrel.

Everybody I meet is good people. Some have bad habits or bad situations — same as me. I've done things out here that I'm not proud of, things that make me feel guilty. I speak against doing drugs. I want kids not to do drugs, but yet, if you put a drug in front of me, I'm going to do it. Like I told my kids, "Do as I say, not as I do." I'm telling you, it's going to fuck you up. It's going to do bad things.

Take it to the bank. If you don't believe me, go check with a doctor. He'll tell you, "Yeah, we know now." Because we've taken somebody's brain apart, and we can tell you exactly what the fuck that drug did to their brain. So we can tell you, "Yeah, you don't need that in your system."

If you still want it, then, when you get a little older and think about it, you can make that choice. It's a free fucking country — supposed to be a free world. They're out there, they're available. If you ain't getting them from a fucking doctor and you still want it, you're going to go find it somewhere. No matter what anybody's told you, no matter what you've learned, no matter how many people you've seen dead, if you still say, "Yeah, I want that," you're going to go find it. And I guarantee you, there's plenty of people out there who've got it for you.

So why not do like Europe? Why not just be able to go to a fucking doctor, let the doctor tell you the do's and don'ts, and give it to you in maybe a smaller dose? They'll say, "Here, your system will handle this."

When I got on methadone, I told my counselor, "Look, detox is great. I'm off it, I'm clean. But I need maintenance, because I'm going to go out on the streets and get something else when I need it." He said, "But you're going to need this every day of your life. Do you have any idea what it's going to be like to go through life needing something every time?" And I said, "You mean like food, oxygen, water? Because from what I know, I need them every fucking day, and if I don't get them, I'm going to feel weak, sick, or not right."

But as a thinking body, you're going to put in it what it needs, or you're going to say, "Fuck it, I'm going to lay here and die." But it's still a choice that you get to make. There shouldn't be someone else making that choice for you.

Peace and love, freedom — all the basics that everybody wants for everybody else and themselves. You know, it's not a message someone else has to give you. It's something you already know.

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Original interview can be seen here: Watch on YouTube.